


but you are your mother's child (and she'll keep you for a while)

by commonemergency



Series: where things come back. [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 22:05:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13866933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: He was thankful for his mum, thankful that out of all the mums he could have had the universe gave him this one.





	but you are your mother's child (and she'll keep you for a while)

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a while since i've written for this universe, but i missed it. 
> 
> this was written because i tried to sleep but i just couldn't until i wrote a certain scene out. 
> 
> this takes place sometime after the breakup but before the hospital. 
> 
> the title is from the song 'you are your mother's child' by conor oberst.

Phil spends a weekend at his grandparents house in the Isle of Man, it’s peaceful, he can take a long walk to clear his head, but his fingers twitch for his phone to send a text that he’s written and rewritten over and over again. Instead he grabs for his camera, taking pictures of the beautiful things that he sees because it’s just like that sometimes. When his heart feels so heavy and like he can’t breathe he can try and put that feeling into some good use. 

He’s always taken video of things, he says things sometimes, a thought that pops in his head, like how well he’s known this pathway because he’s climbed it once before when he was a child or with his brother. He’s alone now and there’s something complex about that. He’s alone in a lot of ways, often wondering why he pushed so many people away when they’ve tried to reach out to him. He didn’t used to be like that but he thinks that’s just how it is sometimes. Old friends wouldn’t understand, new friends understand _too_ much, his life had been put on display for people to see, he feels vulnerable in a lot of ways, wanting to talk to someone but the person he wants to talk to is far away, in London, doing things that Phil has no right to know about. 

His mother bakes, his dad paints, his brother has his own life with his friends and his girlfriend, and Phil has a camera. It’s funny how a camera has had so much to do with everything that happened and yet it’s his only best friend. His goal is to find solitude, whether it’s on this isle or in himself- he doesn’t know. 

It’s a foggy day, a little eerie but still beautiful. He kicks rocks and grabs some, wiping the dirt off of it, he doesn’t know why, he’s just going to throw it. He knows that it won’t ever hit the water, he doesn’t have that great of an aim, but it reminds him of being a kid again and he would always bet with Martyn to see who could throw the farthest. He never won but he tried his best. He keeps the last rock in his pocket, a souvenir of his travels up the hill. 

He knows that he should be heading back soon, he promised his mother he’d help ice the cake that she was making, ‘ _just because_ ’, she says when he asked why. She’s been overly motherly with him, and while he gets why he felt like he was suffocating in there with all the memories that he had yet to experience with Dan that he may never, it was a lot for him, and he just needed this brief moment to himself. He wants to shake his head at how ridiculous it sounds, how ridiculous he feels. He’s felt heartbreak before but never like this. Some days it feels unbearable, like he doesn’t want to get out of bed because it hurts too much. 

_He missed his best friend._

When he reaches the top of the hill everything is layered in fog. He takes his camera out and starts recording, explaining to no one but himself that when he was a kid he would try and barrel all the way down but his mother would yell at him claiming that he’d probably break something and she was probably right. He finds himself laughing at his last attempt when he was ten, he had gotten so muddy because he tripped before anything, and ended up spraining his ankle and his dad had to carry him back home. Not everything was tainted, the memory was a good one regardless of the sprained ankle. His father never made him feel bad because he cried, he just patted his back like any loving father would do, and his mother was trying to pat his face, brushing away the layers of mud, he remembers how cool her fingers were against his head and how good it felt to be the certain of attention for a moment. 

It was nice to be noticed and to be loved. 

He knows that this footage may never see the light of day online, he just did this for him as a memoriam of some sort, though he doesn’t know of what. He tries hard not to think about the future because it was terrifying and all consuming. He stops the thought and turns the camera off to take another picture and heads back down the hill to his grandparents house. 

When he gets back to the house he leaves his muddy shoes outside and he’s greeted with warmth and the smell of something sweet. He smiles at his mum going back to the guest room that he was staying in and changing into something more comfortable. He takes his contacts out and puts his glasses on even if he doesn’t really like how he looks in them. 

His mother has everything ready for them on the table. 

“There’s no real theme to it,” she says with a laugh. 

There’s all the colours of the rainbow with sprinkles and even candles to put on the cake regardless of the fact that it’s no one’s birthday. He sits across from his mum grabbing the blue because it catches his eye. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he draws circles and then another one. He can see how this could be cathartic, his mind goes blank for a while, only thinking about the fact that he hasn’t used the purple icing in a while. 

He knows that his mum is staring at him, he plays guessing games with the questions that she’s bound to ask. 

It reminded him of his first night back home and how it was the hardest, he had tried to put on act that he was fine, but then at dinner it was quiet, and he wasn’t really hungry and when his dad asked if he was settled in he had to leave the table to go up to his old room full of memories that just made it worse. His mother found him tangled up in his sheets staring at the wall. She had told him to move over to make room for her, and she had gotten under the sheets with him and rubbed his back like she used to do when he was a kid and had a nightmare. 

He was thankful for his mum, thankful that out of all the mums he could have had the universe gave him this one. While there were secrets and things that he wasn’t ready to share with her he knew that he was in a safe place. That feeling that he felt that night was back again as she passed him the pink icing that he would inevitably grab when he ran out of the one he kept reusing. 

“Are you alright, love?” she didn’t look at him when she asked, just grabbed some of the sprinkles to put on her side of the cake. 

He bit down on his lip for a moment, focusing on the swirl a little bit too hard to try an avoid the questions that he doesn’t want to answer. 

He shrugs his shoulders, “I’m tired.” He says, and it was true. He was tired. It was the kind of tired that felt like a long winter, it ached, and he didn’t feel settled no matter how hard he tried. 

She nodded her head, accepting it and not pushing it further. He’d give her a couple minutes before she had a follow up question to that. 

“Well I don’t know about you, but I’d put this up in a bakery shop.” She says with a smile when they run out of room to place icing and sprinkles.

He laughs softly, turning the cake around to look at her side, admiring her attempt at trying to make it look nice in comparison to his side which was a complete mess of circles and swirls that didn’t go in any particular direction. It was too fitting. 

“It’s a bit rubbish on my side.” He says with another laugh, grabbing his camera that he sat next to them. He presses record, he’s not saying anything but his mum spins the cake to give the camera all the angles of it. He stops recording to take a picture and now he doesn’t know what to do. 

His mother gets up abruptly to walk back to the kitchen and grab two plates, two forks, and a knife for them to cut it with.

“I know we were supposed to wait for everyone to come back from town, but we can take two slivers of the cake, huh?” She says ecstatically, and he knows that she is who he gets his sweet tooth from. Not matter how crap he’s feeling he’d never turn down cake, especially one that his mother made. 

She cuts them two thin slices. The first bite is glorious, nothing beats homemade cake. He’s trying to pace himself because a few more bites and he’ll be done. 

“The best ‘ _just because_ ’ cake I’ve ever had.” Phil says to his mum who looks pleased. 

When the last bites of cake are eaten they take their dirty plates to the sink and start cleaning up the mess that’s been made. Phil scrubs and his mum dries, they have a good system here but he feels it coming. 

“Do you feel better?” She asks. 

“I don’t know.” He says with a sigh. “It just hurts.” 

It just hurts in ways that he doesn’t understand. He knows that she’s trying her best to understand, they’re both no strangers to heartbreak but she had already lived through that and Phil was going through it, he couldn’t meet his mum in the middle because he couldn’t even find it. 

“I know.” She says in that kind of voice that comes from experience and love. He gives her the last dish and she dries it, wiping her hands on a clean towel before she wraps her arms around her tall son. 

He doesn’t reject it, quite the opposite -- he wishes he were smaller, like the child he used to be, because this hug was something that he didn’t know he needed. He doesn’t pull away, and it feels like the hug lasts forever, and he knows that once she does pulls away those things that were broken inside of him wouldn’t be fixed but they’d be more manageable, all because his mother loved him. 

“You’ll be okay.” she whispers, giving him one last squeeze. 

When they eventually pull away she reaches up to cup his cheek and he sniffs even though he’s not crying he just feels like it. 

“Let’s watch something.” She smiles, walking passed him to the living room. 

He follows his mum, that’s the one thing he can do.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated!
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan.**


End file.
